Sam Bennett’s long path back to what he hopes will be the top of his game reaches a new milestone on Friday when he begins the Vuelta a España, his first Grand Tour in two years. The objective, he told reporters, is to “find myself and get those wins.”
The Bora-Hansgrohe sprinter has had anything but an easy last twelve months, with a knee injury wrecking the second half of his 2021 season, which ended with a turbulent exit from QuickStep.
This year there has been just one win, though it was a notable one, at Eschborn-Frankfurt. Bennett was not selected for the Tour de France, however, as Bora-Hansgrohe placed a greater emphasis on the general classification. Taking part in the Vuelta thus became the last big chance for Bennett to make his mark on the season.
That opportunity was confirmed after the Tour de Pologne, and a fifth place in the recent European Championships has shown the 31-year-old’s form “is coming”, as he recognised in a press conference on Wednesday morning.
Bennett is riding for a team with multiple goals on this Vuelta, including the GC, but the two flat opening road stages in Holland present two clear opportunities for bunch sprints, and the Irishman will hope to make an impact even before the race makes the long transfer south on Monday.
Over the three weeks, Bennett will be aiming to succeed Sean Kelly as Ireland’s most recent winner of the Vuelta’s points jersey, which Kelly took for a fourth time in nine editions back in 1988. But the top priority is a stage.
“It would be really nice to get a stage here, although first of all we’ve got the team time trial, and the very first thing is not to let the team down there. You probably can’t win the Vuelta that day, but you can definitely lose it,” Bennett said.
“So I’ll be 100 percent committed there, make sure we do a solid TTT, and then it’ll be onto my own goals.
“I definitely would like to get a stage here and really fight for the points jersey. But with those goals in mind, it’s an opportunity for me to find my level again. I can see the form is coming, but it’s been two years since my last Grand Tour and with the time I’ve missed the last two years, you kind of feel that. So I [just want to] find myself in this race again and get those wins.”
Bennett’s track record in the Vuelta is a good one, with two stages in 2019, and one from 2020. But that means heightened expectation, too. At 31, and with eight Grand Tour stage victories under his belt,…
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